Terrorism and Islam: A glace at the Guardian's 'Comment Is Free' section.
Considering a number of articles here.
First an article by Khaled Diab entitled "The Muslim Faithless" considers Salman Rushdie's novel 'The Satanic Verses' 18 years later than its original release. It also considers the outrages over the Danish cartoons which puts it about 2 years overdue for that too. Nevertheless Diab makes a good point about the kind of mentality behind the protests by Muslims against both Rushdie's book and the Danish cartoons:
"But, like other examples of book burnings - and cartoon rage - throughout history, the fury had little to do with Rushdie or his book, since none of the angry mobs have ever actually read it. It is a reaction to western hegemony, socio-economic stagnation, poverty, dictatorship and the slow death of the modern Muslim secular dream."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secondly an article by Josh Freedman Berthoud entitled "Dangerous Little Words". Josh criticises the BBC for using the term 'Asian-looking men' in their reports on the terrorist attack on Glasgow airport where two men set their car (and themselves) on fire and tried to drive into the middle of the airport. It is already a very unhelpful stereotype that Arabs and terrorists are seen as linked in the public mindset. However, blaming the BBC might not have been so fair. A quick google search reveals that the BBC were not the only people using this term to describe the criminals. It's becoming a little too trendy to blame the BBC these days. The real culprits here are clearly those giving out the press releases concerning the issue, not those writing the report. If the best description we have of the terror suspects is 'Asian-looking men' it seems a bit daft to avoid publishing in fear of not being politically correct.
So what is the writer so worried about? Well it is revealed in this paragraph here:
"I'm in Israel at the moment, where decades of conflict mean that you can frequently hear the terms Arab, Muslim and terrorist unhelpfully conflated. An entire people is held at bay. Likewise, over in Gaza, a cute little mouse tells children about the Jewish Israeli murderers. There is little doubt here over what such rhetoric can achieve."
Terms like 'Arab Muslim' or 'Jewish Israeli' are being used as important adjectives for the words 'terrorist' and 'murderer'. The words go alongside each other as if they add something to what is being said; as if they reveal an important truth. Certainly there is nothing wrong with simply recognising that the terrorists at Glasgow airport were Asian. What is more concerning is when the two become unnecessarily conflated. It wouldn't be surprising if many of the terrorists were discovered to be good at engineering or chemistry since such skills are probably helpful in designing bombs and dealing with the chemicals involved, but we would feel shocked if it were insinuated that being an engineer or chemist was a reason to distrust someone. It would seem very daft if someone said 'but the people making the bombs ARE good at chemistry and engineering!' Yet for some reason when someone says 'but the people who are carrying out the attacks ARE mostly Asians' people seem to shake their heads as if an important truth has been stated which we should sit up and take note of.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inayat Bunglawala writes in his article "The Spread Of Terror" that he is disturbed that the majority of focus was put on the attack in Glasgow where no one other than the would-be terrorists was badly harmed while no real attention was give to the horrific news of huge civillian casualties due to coalition airstrikes in Afghanistan. To be honest, I'm not really surprised or upset by this and Bunglawala shouldn't be either. It is natural that we are going to be much more concerned about events that happen in our own country than those which happen abroad.
What is upsetting is not that no one was concerned about yet another report about deaths in the middle east, but rather that few individuals in the UK seem to recognise the kind of horrific tactics which are still being used by gung-ho American soldiers in the middle east. Apparently American General Dan McNeill is very keen on using air strikes to take out insurgents despite that inevitable civilian casualties (and senior British soldiers have rightly criticised him for it). As a result of this kind of irreverence for human life there have been more deaths due to coalition forces than due to the actions of insurgent. Yet this is meant to be a 'peace keeping' force!
While I can see the importance of this kind of information. Bunglawala's own article is decidedly unhelpful. He describes the following statement by Tony Blair to be a straw man:
"The idea that as a Muslim in this country that you don't have the freedom to express your religion or your views, I mean you've got far more freedom in this country than you do in most Muslim countries."
This isn't to say that he thinks the statement false. In fact he claims it to be 'undoubtedly true'. What he claims is that it is misleading because the reason the terrorists are attacking is because of British foreign policy, not their lack of freedoms. The problem here (and many Muslims will probably share my annoyance at this) is that he is trying to justify the terrorist attacks. I don't think I'm being controversial in saying this. If you don't like British foreign policy and there is plenty of freedom to express your views there is no justification for trying to kill innocent civilians in Britain. These terrorist attacks only serve to give politicians further justification for their 'war on terror' and (as we saw in Berthoud's article) encourage further Islamophobia and racism.
The biggest problem with Bunglawala's article is that the reason why the deaths in Afghanistan were not prominent in the news was not because of media bias (after all, the press has had a field day with reports of Britsh/American misconduct in the middle east), but rather because the attack in Glasgow served to draw attention away from the situation in Afghanistan. People are unworried about unfortunate tragedies in Afghanistan when there is threat closer to home.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Bunglawala's misplaced criticism we now move to another writer's obscurant name-calling. Dan Hind's article "War and Enlightenment" insists that discussion of Enlightenment values is an unhelpful addition to the discussion concerning the Iraq war, terrorism and religious fundamentalism. In Hind's article he is keen to make the Enlightenment his focus for criticism, but never actually explains why. Apparently the supporters of the Iraq were not interested in tackling terrorism, disarming the country's WMDs or promoting 'freedom', but were actually insisting on Enlightenment values. No real backing is given for this assertion.
Perhaps we can squeeze some bloody sense out of this stony article by looking not at 'Enlightenment values', but rather at Bush's insistence that he wants to encourage freedom (with terrorists being described as 'enemies of freedom'). Isn't freedom being put forward here as a secular value left rather under-defined? Certainly this use of the term 'freedom' is just begging to be deconstructed and critiqued. But what kind of values is it hiding? Surely the 'enemies of freedom' are those who oppose the invasion? The state being invaded was not a Muslim state with Taliban-style religious dictats as the basis of its oppression, but a secular state with the dictats of its singular totalitarian leader as the basis of oppression. Muslim insurgents in Iraq were actually using their new-found freedom of religious expression to fuel their attacks on what they saw as an occupying force preventing the Iraqi people from defining how the country is governed. The point here is that both Bush and the Muslim insurgents have 'freedom' on their mind.
But if both groups care about some ideal of 'freedom' doesn't that refute the idea that the problem here is to do with the Enlightenment? Surely the issue here is that a minority group of religious extremists are trying to decide the future Iraq with violent force and don't care about the Iraqis who get caught in the crossfire. We also have the Sunni/Shia conflict causing more violent disturbances. And then on the coalition side of the fence we have many of the most avid supporters of the war holding both a right-wing Christian agenda and a strong Islamophobia. If this isn't a religious issue, what on Earth is it?
The only individuals Hind seems to be prepared to name in his tirade are Richards Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens makes a bit of sense as a target since, as well as disagreeing with religious dogmas, he also supported the Iraq war. However, why is Dawkins being drawn into this? Surely Hind doesn't want to pretend that the problems in Iraq aren't related to religious ideology, and surely Hitchens is right to criticise Islamic terrorism regardless of his position on the Iraq war. It is becoming a bit of a fashion to criticise Dawkins in articles, but as someone who said the following about the Iraq conflict in 2003 it hardly seems fair to pigeon-hole him with an Iraq war supporter like Hitchens:
"Imagine how it looks from Bin Laden's warped point of view...
'If the American victory is swift, Bush will have done our work for us, removing the hated Saddam and opening the way for a decent Islamist government. Even better, in 2004 Bush may actually win an election. Who can guess what that swaggering, strutting little pouter-pigeon will then get up to, and what resentments he will arouse, when he finally has something to swagger about? We shall have so many martyrs volunteering, we shall run out of targets. And a slow and bloody American victory would be better still.'
The claim that this war is about weapons of mass destruction is either dishonest or betrays a lack of foresight verging on negligence. If war is so vitally necessary now, was it not at least worth mentioning in the election campaigns of 2000 and 2001?"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anas Altikriti, in his article "The New Fundamentalism" is appalled by an ex-extremist Muslim's claims that Islamic theology is responsible for the violence. In the article by Hassan Butt to which he replies, the following claim is made:
But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Islamic institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology. They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex topic of violence within Islam and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace, focus on Islam as personal, and hope that all of this debate will go away.
This is the Muslim equivalent of Richard Dawkins criticising more liberal Christian groups of 'cherry picking'. Scriptural hermeneutics is a very awkward process and there are plenty of dodgy Biblical verses. It simply isn't true to say that Islam is any more likely to lead people towards violent extremism than Christianity. In fact Christianity has had a long history of anti-semitism which is well-documented (as much as Christians don't like to admit it, Nazi anti-semitism had its origins in Christian thought).
Altikriti is horrified by Butt's article because it completely undermines the work that people like himself have done towards scriptural interpretation and producing a liberal progressive Islam. Butt's claims seems to assert that Islam, if taken seriously, will lead to followers joining the ranks of the terrorist - so Butt is essentially saying that, within the context of Islamic thought, the terrorists are right!
Thankfully Alkriti is sensible enough to recognise that Bunglawala's assertion that British foreign policy is entirely to blame for terrorist activity is too simple. He is nevertheless absolutely right to more moderately describe the foreign policy as a contributing factor. No one could pretend that the dodgy foreign policy in the middle east hasn't set up the kind of disenfranchisement which radical groups can use for recruitment.
In the comments on the article someone suggest that, if Alkriti has so many fellow Muslims who object to the terrorism, why doesn't he have a march in London expressing this. Well the problem is that the government have been making an awful lot of bad decisions in how they deal with Muslims in Britain. If a group of Muslims march in London against terrorism, they would inevitably seen as supporting the bad anti-terrorist policies of the government. Not only that but radical Muslims can be viciously opposed to Muslims who take a more liberal stance. Marches in London have to be announced in order to gather together people to take part, so you couldn't really set up a better target for radical Muslim terrorism than most of the country's anti-terrorist Muslims all in one place.
Alkriti makes his point very clear:
Criticising organisations and individuals who have been fighting an internal war against extremism - while continually being stabbed in the back by misguided government policies and media prejudice - will not solve the problem.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next up it's Asim Siddiqui with his article "Not In Our Name". The article is mainly focussed on the problems with making foreign policy into an excuse for Muslim terrorism. It's a good article and some very good points are made. However, there were a few points I found a bit iffy.
Siddiqui asks why the Muslim authorities in Britain were not up in arms over Darfur, suggesting that the answer is because they don't care about when Muslims kill other Muslims, but only when Muslims are harmed by the West. To be fair, however, it is unsurprising that people tend to care more about what is closer to home. Muslims who happen to live in another country can do what they like, but when British troops are involved it is much more of an issue for British Muslims.
Siddiqui also criticises Muslims for not tackling the radicalisation that occurs within its own ranks. However, Alkriti clearly stated that there are Muslims attempting to do this. While I could not find an article on the internet, I read an article in a local newspaper in greater London about a government scheme to prevent younger Muslims becoming radicalised which is being supported by the local mosques. It was just the kind of effort to tackle Muslim radicalisation which Siddiqui wants us believe isn't taking place.
While I would have loved to have agreed with Siddiqui, he seems a little blind-sided to the efforts of Muslims who would agree with him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We now come to possibly the best article about the situation so far. Salma Yaqoob's article "Them And Us" claims that neither problems with Islamic theology nor problems with British foreign policy can be taken as the exclusive reason for Islamic terrorism. A real explanation for the attacks must involve a combination of the two. The insistence that Muslims 'speak out' against terrorism implies that people suspect that there is conspiracy within the so-called "Muslim community" to encourage terrorism, and this is only helping to make Muslims feel alienated and defensive.
And they are not wrong to feel defensive. Islamophobia has become rife and Riazat Butt gives a testimony to the assumption of guilt which can be placed upon ordinary peaceful Muslims.
Yaquoob is also right to be angry about Tony Blair's recent comments, since regardless of how many freedoms Muslims have in Britain by contrast to Muslim countries in the middle east, that doesn't mean that movements for civil liberties should be impeded.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I very much doubt that any of what I have written above will do much for Islamophobia, and I doubt that a Muslim who reads this will be saved from any possible 'radicalisation', but I nevertheless think that I've separated the lambs and the goats somewhat (to use an unfortunate piece of religious imagery) in noting which articles get carried away with stereotypes and which articles seem a little more balanced.
First an article by Khaled Diab entitled "The Muslim Faithless" considers Salman Rushdie's novel 'The Satanic Verses' 18 years later than its original release. It also considers the outrages over the Danish cartoons which puts it about 2 years overdue for that too. Nevertheless Diab makes a good point about the kind of mentality behind the protests by Muslims against both Rushdie's book and the Danish cartoons:
"But, like other examples of book burnings - and cartoon rage - throughout history, the fury had little to do with Rushdie or his book, since none of the angry mobs have ever actually read it. It is a reaction to western hegemony, socio-economic stagnation, poverty, dictatorship and the slow death of the modern Muslim secular dream."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secondly an article by Josh Freedman Berthoud entitled "Dangerous Little Words". Josh criticises the BBC for using the term 'Asian-looking men' in their reports on the terrorist attack on Glasgow airport where two men set their car (and themselves) on fire and tried to drive into the middle of the airport. It is already a very unhelpful stereotype that Arabs and terrorists are seen as linked in the public mindset. However, blaming the BBC might not have been so fair. A quick google search reveals that the BBC were not the only people using this term to describe the criminals. It's becoming a little too trendy to blame the BBC these days. The real culprits here are clearly those giving out the press releases concerning the issue, not those writing the report. If the best description we have of the terror suspects is 'Asian-looking men' it seems a bit daft to avoid publishing in fear of not being politically correct.
So what is the writer so worried about? Well it is revealed in this paragraph here:
"I'm in Israel at the moment, where decades of conflict mean that you can frequently hear the terms Arab, Muslim and terrorist unhelpfully conflated. An entire people is held at bay. Likewise, over in Gaza, a cute little mouse tells children about the Jewish Israeli murderers. There is little doubt here over what such rhetoric can achieve."
Terms like 'Arab Muslim' or 'Jewish Israeli' are being used as important adjectives for the words 'terrorist' and 'murderer'. The words go alongside each other as if they add something to what is being said; as if they reveal an important truth. Certainly there is nothing wrong with simply recognising that the terrorists at Glasgow airport were Asian. What is more concerning is when the two become unnecessarily conflated. It wouldn't be surprising if many of the terrorists were discovered to be good at engineering or chemistry since such skills are probably helpful in designing bombs and dealing with the chemicals involved, but we would feel shocked if it were insinuated that being an engineer or chemist was a reason to distrust someone. It would seem very daft if someone said 'but the people making the bombs ARE good at chemistry and engineering!' Yet for some reason when someone says 'but the people who are carrying out the attacks ARE mostly Asians' people seem to shake their heads as if an important truth has been stated which we should sit up and take note of.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inayat Bunglawala writes in his article "The Spread Of Terror" that he is disturbed that the majority of focus was put on the attack in Glasgow where no one other than the would-be terrorists was badly harmed while no real attention was give to the horrific news of huge civillian casualties due to coalition airstrikes in Afghanistan. To be honest, I'm not really surprised or upset by this and Bunglawala shouldn't be either. It is natural that we are going to be much more concerned about events that happen in our own country than those which happen abroad.
What is upsetting is not that no one was concerned about yet another report about deaths in the middle east, but rather that few individuals in the UK seem to recognise the kind of horrific tactics which are still being used by gung-ho American soldiers in the middle east. Apparently American General Dan McNeill is very keen on using air strikes to take out insurgents despite that inevitable civilian casualties (and senior British soldiers have rightly criticised him for it). As a result of this kind of irreverence for human life there have been more deaths due to coalition forces than due to the actions of insurgent. Yet this is meant to be a 'peace keeping' force!
While I can see the importance of this kind of information. Bunglawala's own article is decidedly unhelpful. He describes the following statement by Tony Blair to be a straw man:
"The idea that as a Muslim in this country that you don't have the freedom to express your religion or your views, I mean you've got far more freedom in this country than you do in most Muslim countries."
This isn't to say that he thinks the statement false. In fact he claims it to be 'undoubtedly true'. What he claims is that it is misleading because the reason the terrorists are attacking is because of British foreign policy, not their lack of freedoms. The problem here (and many Muslims will probably share my annoyance at this) is that he is trying to justify the terrorist attacks. I don't think I'm being controversial in saying this. If you don't like British foreign policy and there is plenty of freedom to express your views there is no justification for trying to kill innocent civilians in Britain. These terrorist attacks only serve to give politicians further justification for their 'war on terror' and (as we saw in Berthoud's article) encourage further Islamophobia and racism.
The biggest problem with Bunglawala's article is that the reason why the deaths in Afghanistan were not prominent in the news was not because of media bias (after all, the press has had a field day with reports of Britsh/American misconduct in the middle east), but rather because the attack in Glasgow served to draw attention away from the situation in Afghanistan. People are unworried about unfortunate tragedies in Afghanistan when there is threat closer to home.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Bunglawala's misplaced criticism we now move to another writer's obscurant name-calling. Dan Hind's article "War and Enlightenment" insists that discussion of Enlightenment values is an unhelpful addition to the discussion concerning the Iraq war, terrorism and religious fundamentalism. In Hind's article he is keen to make the Enlightenment his focus for criticism, but never actually explains why. Apparently the supporters of the Iraq were not interested in tackling terrorism, disarming the country's WMDs or promoting 'freedom', but were actually insisting on Enlightenment values. No real backing is given for this assertion.
Perhaps we can squeeze some bloody sense out of this stony article by looking not at 'Enlightenment values', but rather at Bush's insistence that he wants to encourage freedom (with terrorists being described as 'enemies of freedom'). Isn't freedom being put forward here as a secular value left rather under-defined? Certainly this use of the term 'freedom' is just begging to be deconstructed and critiqued. But what kind of values is it hiding? Surely the 'enemies of freedom' are those who oppose the invasion? The state being invaded was not a Muslim state with Taliban-style religious dictats as the basis of its oppression, but a secular state with the dictats of its singular totalitarian leader as the basis of oppression. Muslim insurgents in Iraq were actually using their new-found freedom of religious expression to fuel their attacks on what they saw as an occupying force preventing the Iraqi people from defining how the country is governed. The point here is that both Bush and the Muslim insurgents have 'freedom' on their mind.
But if both groups care about some ideal of 'freedom' doesn't that refute the idea that the problem here is to do with the Enlightenment? Surely the issue here is that a minority group of religious extremists are trying to decide the future Iraq with violent force and don't care about the Iraqis who get caught in the crossfire. We also have the Sunni/Shia conflict causing more violent disturbances. And then on the coalition side of the fence we have many of the most avid supporters of the war holding both a right-wing Christian agenda and a strong Islamophobia. If this isn't a religious issue, what on Earth is it?
The only individuals Hind seems to be prepared to name in his tirade are Richards Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens makes a bit of sense as a target since, as well as disagreeing with religious dogmas, he also supported the Iraq war. However, why is Dawkins being drawn into this? Surely Hind doesn't want to pretend that the problems in Iraq aren't related to religious ideology, and surely Hitchens is right to criticise Islamic terrorism regardless of his position on the Iraq war. It is becoming a bit of a fashion to criticise Dawkins in articles, but as someone who said the following about the Iraq conflict in 2003 it hardly seems fair to pigeon-hole him with an Iraq war supporter like Hitchens:
"Imagine how it looks from Bin Laden's warped point of view...
'If the American victory is swift, Bush will have done our work for us, removing the hated Saddam and opening the way for a decent Islamist government. Even better, in 2004 Bush may actually win an election. Who can guess what that swaggering, strutting little pouter-pigeon will then get up to, and what resentments he will arouse, when he finally has something to swagger about? We shall have so many martyrs volunteering, we shall run out of targets. And a slow and bloody American victory would be better still.'
The claim that this war is about weapons of mass destruction is either dishonest or betrays a lack of foresight verging on negligence. If war is so vitally necessary now, was it not at least worth mentioning in the election campaigns of 2000 and 2001?"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anas Altikriti, in his article "The New Fundamentalism" is appalled by an ex-extremist Muslim's claims that Islamic theology is responsible for the violence. In the article by Hassan Butt to which he replies, the following claim is made:
But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Islamic institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology. They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex topic of violence within Islam and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace, focus on Islam as personal, and hope that all of this debate will go away.
This is the Muslim equivalent of Richard Dawkins criticising more liberal Christian groups of 'cherry picking'. Scriptural hermeneutics is a very awkward process and there are plenty of dodgy Biblical verses. It simply isn't true to say that Islam is any more likely to lead people towards violent extremism than Christianity. In fact Christianity has had a long history of anti-semitism which is well-documented (as much as Christians don't like to admit it, Nazi anti-semitism had its origins in Christian thought).
Altikriti is horrified by Butt's article because it completely undermines the work that people like himself have done towards scriptural interpretation and producing a liberal progressive Islam. Butt's claims seems to assert that Islam, if taken seriously, will lead to followers joining the ranks of the terrorist - so Butt is essentially saying that, within the context of Islamic thought, the terrorists are right!
Thankfully Alkriti is sensible enough to recognise that Bunglawala's assertion that British foreign policy is entirely to blame for terrorist activity is too simple. He is nevertheless absolutely right to more moderately describe the foreign policy as a contributing factor. No one could pretend that the dodgy foreign policy in the middle east hasn't set up the kind of disenfranchisement which radical groups can use for recruitment.
In the comments on the article someone suggest that, if Alkriti has so many fellow Muslims who object to the terrorism, why doesn't he have a march in London expressing this. Well the problem is that the government have been making an awful lot of bad decisions in how they deal with Muslims in Britain. If a group of Muslims march in London against terrorism, they would inevitably seen as supporting the bad anti-terrorist policies of the government. Not only that but radical Muslims can be viciously opposed to Muslims who take a more liberal stance. Marches in London have to be announced in order to gather together people to take part, so you couldn't really set up a better target for radical Muslim terrorism than most of the country's anti-terrorist Muslims all in one place.
Alkriti makes his point very clear:
Criticising organisations and individuals who have been fighting an internal war against extremism - while continually being stabbed in the back by misguided government policies and media prejudice - will not solve the problem.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next up it's Asim Siddiqui with his article "Not In Our Name". The article is mainly focussed on the problems with making foreign policy into an excuse for Muslim terrorism. It's a good article and some very good points are made. However, there were a few points I found a bit iffy.
Siddiqui asks why the Muslim authorities in Britain were not up in arms over Darfur, suggesting that the answer is because they don't care about when Muslims kill other Muslims, but only when Muslims are harmed by the West. To be fair, however, it is unsurprising that people tend to care more about what is closer to home. Muslims who happen to live in another country can do what they like, but when British troops are involved it is much more of an issue for British Muslims.
Siddiqui also criticises Muslims for not tackling the radicalisation that occurs within its own ranks. However, Alkriti clearly stated that there are Muslims attempting to do this. While I could not find an article on the internet, I read an article in a local newspaper in greater London about a government scheme to prevent younger Muslims becoming radicalised which is being supported by the local mosques. It was just the kind of effort to tackle Muslim radicalisation which Siddiqui wants us believe isn't taking place.
While I would have loved to have agreed with Siddiqui, he seems a little blind-sided to the efforts of Muslims who would agree with him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We now come to possibly the best article about the situation so far. Salma Yaqoob's article "Them And Us" claims that neither problems with Islamic theology nor problems with British foreign policy can be taken as the exclusive reason for Islamic terrorism. A real explanation for the attacks must involve a combination of the two. The insistence that Muslims 'speak out' against terrorism implies that people suspect that there is conspiracy within the so-called "Muslim community" to encourage terrorism, and this is only helping to make Muslims feel alienated and defensive.
And they are not wrong to feel defensive. Islamophobia has become rife and Riazat Butt gives a testimony to the assumption of guilt which can be placed upon ordinary peaceful Muslims.
Yaquoob is also right to be angry about Tony Blair's recent comments, since regardless of how many freedoms Muslims have in Britain by contrast to Muslim countries in the middle east, that doesn't mean that movements for civil liberties should be impeded.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I very much doubt that any of what I have written above will do much for Islamophobia, and I doubt that a Muslim who reads this will be saved from any possible 'radicalisation', but I nevertheless think that I've separated the lambs and the goats somewhat (to use an unfortunate piece of religious imagery) in noting which articles get carried away with stereotypes and which articles seem a little more balanced.